The present invention relates to apparatus for producing a food product and to a food product made from minced fish meat and the like, having the appearance of cooked-and-peeled shrimp.
Apparatus for producing food products having the appearance of cooked-and-peeled shrimp from minced fish meat are disclosed in the applicants' U.S. patent application Ser. No. 818,618 now U.S. Pat. No. 4,692,341, and Ser. No. 879,984 now U.S. Pat. No. 4,807,524, and in Japanese patent application 60-211805 (Provisional Publication SHO. 62-69967, laid open Mar. 31, 1987). These U.S. applications, the disclosures therein being incorporated into this application by reference, disclose apparatus including a split-in-two metal mold having a cavity in the shape of a cooked-and-peeled or shelled shrimp, a device for spraying a dye over the inner surface of the mold, a filler for injecting minced fish meat into the mold cavity, a heating device for heating and solidifying the minced fish meat in the mold, and a device for removing the food product from the mold. The shrimp-like food product thus produced has a fanlike tail at one end, an arcuate abdomen portion in the center, and a thicker end which, in a real shrimp, is broken off from the head. As shown in FIG. 4 herein, the mold cavity of a split mold 5 for forming the shelled-shrimp-like food product has its fish meat receiving opening 6 at the thicker end where the removed head is connected.
The food product consists of a main ingredient of ground fish meat to which flavoring and a caking agent are added.
The shelled-shrimp-shaped food products produced by the above-mentioned apparatus have the appearance of the natural or real products. When the natural shrimps are large in size, their gut portion extending from the head to the tail is removed during the cooking-and-peeling process (the intestinal vein is removed in a deveining procedure). The resulting groove does not become colored even after heating, and both ridges or sides of the groove swell after heating. If the simulated food product were formed in this shape by the mold, the product could not be removed out of the mold. If the mold were shaped so that the product can be removed from the mold, the resulting food would not have a natural appearance.